The man page for apparmor.d (5) uses the syntax element AARE in several places, such as in SIGNAL PEER = 'peer' '=' AARE.
The definition for AARE is this:
AARE = ?*[]{}^
See below for meanings.
My question now is: where is this "below"? I suspect AARE to maybe mean "AppArmor Regular Expression" but I simply cannot find anywhere in the AA documentation any explanation for it. Googling or DuckduckGo'ing for "apparmor AARE" simpy draws blanks except for the man page where I cannot find any explanation "below". There is a section about "Globbing" but it is totally unclear to me if the AAREs (regular expressions?) are actually refering to "globbing" -- but then globbing isn't regular expressions.
So what are AARE and what is their syntax examples, as I really don't understand the meaning of ?*[]{}^.
Based on a discussion of my original question on the AppArmor mailing list the simplified answer is: yes, AARE means "AppArmor Regular Expression". However, AAREs are nearer (shell) glob expressions, but with additional AppArmor variable expansion using the @{VAR} syntax. This is not to be confused with the glob syntax of alternatives {A,B,C} which is also supported.
While there have been discussion on man page updates I don't see them yet live in production; the proposed changes should have been related to the Globbing section.